


My Portion Forever

by CalamityBean



Category: Turn (TV 2014)
Genre: Abe is sad and angry, Alcohol, Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Developing Friendships, Enemies to Friends, First Meetings, Fluff and Angst, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Match made in heaven am I right, Recreational Drug Use, Rob is sad and angry, Thanksgiving, past Abraham Woodhull/Anna Strong
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-12-03
Updated: 2016-12-10
Packaged: 2018-09-06 02:54:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,181
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8732047
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CalamityBean/pseuds/CalamityBean
Summary: In the face of deteriorating personal relationships, grief over his brother's recent death, and a fuckload of cabbages he doesn't have the first idea what to do with, Abe Woodhull impulsively attends a Thanksgiving dinner at the home of someone he's never even met. It goes about as well as he should have expected.A sweet, salty, silly, serious, sad and happy little modern AU about meeting new people, coping with loss, and trying to figure out how to move on. Also, bickering and crushes and tea.





	1. Of Cabbages and Teas

**Author's Note:**

> This story is a standalone piece set in the same universe as [LOA](http://archiveofourown.org/works/4504110/chapters/10241874). Neither fic is required reading for the other. Each story _enhances_ the other, certainly, but this is a prequel (set about five years previously), and as such should still work just fine on its own even as it fills in some significant backstory for LOA.
> 
> I meant to start posting this in time for Thanksgiving, but clearly that didn’t happen. It should total about three chapters, which will be posted in the coming weeks. The title is a quote from Psalm 73, which is about loss, and feeling lost, and injustice, and continuing to do what’s right even when it feels like there’s no point to doing so, in faith of finding fulfillment in the end.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter contains an image with plot-relevant text, which I tried to size to display well on both mobile and desktop. A transcript of the text is available in the end notes and should also show up if you hover your cursor over the image itself.

The first thing he noticed about the guy who answered the door were his eyes.

They pinned him like a butterfly to a card. Two needles right to the core. Brown, sure, but not like Anna’s—nearly black, Anna’s eyes were, so that looking into them made his stomach twist with the sick vertigo of leaning over an abandoned well and seeing the bottom disappear into shadows far below. Nah. This guy’s eyes were … golden, almost. Like honeycomb. Like a fox. Like a fox’s, they went well with that angular face and russet hair, and like a fox’s, they transfixed Abe on the threshold with a sudden and visceral sensation of _danger_. It was one of those things that came straight from the ol’ lizard hindbrain: a primitive instinct that whispered that _this_ was a predator and _he_ was prey, and that if he had a lick of sense in him, he’d look at the snarl on those lips and the flush on those cheeks and the unwavering intensity of those amber eyes, and he would _back_. The _fuck_. _Off_.

But if there was one thing in the entire world Abraham Woodhull hated more than anything else, it was doing as he told.

So instead, he bared his teeth in a grin.

“Hey man. Nice place you got here, pretty cool of you to do this and all. I brought, like, _so_ many side dishes, so—”

And the door slammed shut in his face.

 

\--- Three Days Earlier ---

 

“You bought _what."_

There was something about the air in the tea shop that always tasted like a morning on the brink of a storm. Dense, damp, grassy; crackling at the edges with a taut electricity that made his tongue buzz like a kiss with too much teeth. Abe hated the place. He’d never come by at all if Anna hadn’t started working there. Too dark, too trendy with the local hipsters, too freaking _hot_. All day, it’d been flurrying snow outside, so any sensible person’s gonna take certain precautions so as not to freeze off the Woodhull family jewels, right? But one step inside _this_ place, and it was like a sodding greenhouse. Already, Abe felt sweat beading under his beanie and chafing at his scarf.

But all he needed to do to feel a chill, really, was take one look in Anna’s eyes.

Once, he’d have happily drowned in them. _Had_ , daily, drowned in them. But now?

She was looking at him the same way everyone looked at him these days. Like he’d fallen into that well after all, but all anyone who looked down could see was slime.

“Yeah, so uh, it’s a funny story and all,” he told her, trying for his most charming grin. No effect. Itchy all over, he pushed his beanie back over his scalp. “So I’m on my way into town from the city, right, and I pass by that farmers market on Main—you know the one? Figured I’d pick up some oysters or something for Thanksgiving. Bit of a peace offering for Dad … or something to give him a nice bout of food poisoning, in case he’s being too much of a dick.”

Well, shit: Anna didn’t even blink. If he couldn’t get so much as a snicker out of her even at _Dick Woodhull’s_ expense—well, that really said it all, didn’t it.

“…Anyway, I ran across this guy there selling cabbages out of the back of his truck, tryin’ to offload them for, like, practically nothing. And he said he’d throw in some radishes too, and I’d _maybe_ been smoking a bit, so I—”

“A … truckload. Of cabbage. Abe, you don’t even … What are you going to do with a truckload of cabbage? How much cabbage even _is_ that? How can you just—throw around your money like that! You hypocrite!” He opened his mouth to snap that they’d been _cheap as hell_ , Anna, okay, but her hands were clenched on the counter next to two half-brewed cups of tea, and her voice had dropped to a hiss. “ _Some_ people have to do things like drop out out of school because of money, you know, and yet you waltz in here _high_ after I've been working all day and just—tell me about your impulse shopping like I'm supposed to think it's funny? Because it's not. Bad enough you hang around Occupy while Richard still pays your rent; bad enough you’ve never had a job—yet you—yet you have the gall to show up to those protests and act as though you’re so very disadvantaged when—”

“The _fuck_ you know about what happens at protests, Annie, the fuck you think you can tell _me_ about _that?”_

A hush fell over the tea shop as, in unison, half a dozen hipsters stopped pecking on their MacBooks and glanced his way. Too loud. Too loud, too close, too _hot_. And everywhere he looked, Abe saw Thomas’s ghost.

When he glanced back at Anna, her face was pale. Maybe it was guilt that made her avoid his eyes as, biting her lip, she snapped lids onto the two cups of tea. Or maybe she was just embarrassed to be seen with him. Anna's hair drifted around her face, almost as though she were underwater, as she shook her head.

“…Do you even _like_ cabbage?” she sighed, raking back those locks.

Abe summoned a smile up, somehow, as though the conversation could possibly be saved.

“Do I even like cabbage, she asks. And you been datin’ me _how_ long?”

From beneath her knitted brow, Anna gave him a _look_. The answer, he suspected, feeling suddenly very cold, was “ _too_.”

The writing was on the wall for him and Anna. It was up there in big fucking capital letters, so blatant he couldn’t believe she hadn’t noticed yet. Maybe she _had_ and was just too craven to say anything. What, was she waiting for _him_ to do it? Did he _always_ have to be the bad guy, the screw-up, the lesser son, passionate but directionless and cursed with a stubborn streak a mile wide? He thought she’d loved him for all that, once. She was the only one stubborn enough to outlast him, and God, that had been _fun_ : matching wits with her, racing home from school with her, making love like they were fighting a war. But that was when they were kids. Nowadays, he felt like everyone was always watching him out of the corners of their eyes, sick and tired of waiting for him to grow up. Had it never occurred to them that he _had_ —just not the way they wanted?

Friends since they were kids, he and Anna. Sweethearts since high school, engaged half in secret in undergrad, before Anna had to drop out and before their dads had that fight and before Thomas—before a lot of things. Maybe she just wasn’t ready to give up on all that. But there were too many days lately—those days when Thomas’s ghost felt like it was choking him, and pretending to be a functional member of society hurt so bad that all he wanted was to pull the drawstrings tight on his hoodie and disappear—when he found himself fantasizing about the way Anna’s big black eyes would shatter when he told her the truth about Thomas. About Mary. About all the shit he’d _done_.

It never should’ve happened. With Mary. They’d both been so lonely, was all. And so drunk, and so sad.

And it never _would’ve_ happened except for what happened to Thomas, and _that_ never would’ve have happened except…

Except for that contrary streak, and that stubbornness, and the whole damn hilarious Shakespearean tragedy of who Abe simply _was_.

“Anyway. Um. To your other question, though—about what I’m gonna do with it all.” He tried to ignore the customers behind him as, hesitantly, their keyboards resumed clacking again, all of them back at work on the next great American novel(s). “Your boss—don’t get me wrong, Anna, I came here to see _you_ —but I was also thinking: your boss. He’s got all sorts of contacts in the restaurant biz, right? And hell, for all I know, you guys could make some sort of ‘cabbage tea,’ claim it’s a rare delicacy outta some tradition six thousand years old or whatever, and charge six dollars a pot for it. So. Whaddaya say. You think ol’ Selah would—”

The man himself emerged from the storage room just then, a big box of tea in his arms and a suspicious scowl on his stupid chiseled face. Legend had it that Selah Strong _could_ , in fact, smile. Like, it was physically possible and all. Abe was kinda afraid to test that theory, though, just in case it broke the man’s face.

“Selah! Hey. Nice, uh, nice seein’ you, man. Hey, any chance you’d be interested in about thirty pounds of cabbages?”

His last conversation with Strong had been weird and wine-soaked—so weird, Abe wasn’t entirely sure he hadn’t dreamt it. Abe had been soused enough to spill his guts to a near stranger; Strong had said some shit that had Abe _real_ intrigued, providing he was remembering right; and it had left him, frankly, with no idea where the hell he and the shopkeeper stood. That much he learned right now, along with three other things:

One: Cabbage tea _was_ , apparently, actually A Thing. _That_ was a heck of a plot twist, Abe had to admit.

Two: No, of course Selah didn’t want to buy his cabbages, _why did he have so many cabbages_.

Three: Buy something or get the hell out, Woodhull. You’re distracting the help.

 _The help._ Yeah. Like Abe hadn’t noticed the way that bastard looked at Anna when her back was turned.

He left with a cup of lapsang souchong in his hand and the taste of Anna on his lips. The tea, when he sipped it, tasted like pine tar and smoke. She'd tasted like nothing. A taste familiar for so long that it no longer made any particular impression when she leaned across the cafe counter and pressed her lips to his.

“Don’t study too hard,” she’d whispered, her hand on his cheek, and he knew it was her attempt at teasing, but he forgot to laugh. “And take a shower, if you're going to see Richard—you smell like a grow house. I … I’ll see you soon, okay?”

And Anna had hesitated, her lips an inch from his. “I love you.”

“Love you,” he’d echoed, and turned his face away too soon, so that her second kiss landed on his cheek. Holding the paper cup of tea against his chest, Abe ducked his head to the flurries dancing on the wind and trudged blindly toward his car. Snow stung his cheeks, but the cup of tea burned hot against his heart.

He kept thinking about Anna’s hair. The way it curled in the humidity of the shop, drifting around her face like gossamer. The way the heat in there flushed her cheeks and made her neck glimmer with sweat. It made his guts twist, the thought of Selah Strong seeing her like that all day. He didn’t deserve to—not when the way Anna looked in the shop reminded Abe so much of the way she looked lying beside him in bed, her bare skin glistening and her gaze holding his. He wanted to see her like that again just one more time before he told her. Just once more before the end.

But not unless she looked at him like she used to, all warm and welcoming and soft. These days, when he met her eyes, he too often found himself fearing he’d fall down into the coldest part of her and never be able to claw his way back up.

He would tell her after Thanksgiving, he decided as he got into his car. Three more days to take the edge off. That way, they wouldn’t both have to go home for the holidays with the shadow of a breakup hanging over them on top of all the other shit the year had put them through. He'd gone to the tea shop planning to ask Anna to come over to his place for the day, actually, or to try and invite himself to her family's celebration if that failed—but once the cabbages came up, he'd been too afraid of the answer to ask. _Just one last thing,_ he'd wanted to say to her— _Just do this one last thing for me, so I don't have to spend the day alone._

And to think, it had been his favorite holiday, once. Thanksgiving.

The food! The sports! Mom burning yams in the kitchen, and Thomas home from school to regale them all with stories of kooky professors and bullshit classes. God, it was the most perfect, wholesome, Martha's Vineyard-preppy holiday you could imagine, wasn't it, so long as your family was real whitebread and you didn't think too hard about all the blood and broken promises woven into all that Pilgrim shite. The last few Thanksgivings—with Mom gone, and Thomas out of police academy, and Abe too old for anyone to find his contrariness cute anymore—had been a bit … less Norman Rockwell than he remembered them being as a kid. But even after dinners had started devolving into shouting matches about the income gap and corporate corruption and raising the minimum wage, at least Thomas had been there. At least they'd always been able to sneak away after dinner, the two of 'em, nick some liquor and some smokes, and catch up on their own terms, without Dad glaring and grumbling every time they laughed too loud. He couldn't imagine spending the day without Thomas. No more than he could imagine spending it without anyone at all.

This year, though, the only things waiting for Abe in that big, drafty house in Setauket would be a table full of food someone had been hired to cook … An empty chair at one end for Mom, and another across from Abe’s seat for Thomas … And all the time in the world for Dad to review, line by line, every single way Abe had fallen short of his potential this year. That’d been bad enough back when Abe was only supposed to be Abe. But lately, Dad had gotten it in his head that Abe was supposed to be Thomas, too, and how was he supposed to measure up to _that_.

Dead people had it so easy. Die young, and everyone assumed you would’ve gone on to do great things, if only tragedy hadn’t struck. Live, and you got to prove them wrong.

Over. And over. And over again.

That was _one_ thing Abe was turning out to be pretty damn good at, at least.

 

\---

 

He made it all the way back to Manhattan and into the lobby of his professor's building before his phone rang. Abe didn’t even have to check who the caller was before rolling his eyes.

“You were in Setauket today,” was the first thing Dad said to him. Not _hi_. Not _how are you_. Not _how are you holding up_. Abe tapped his Columbia student ID to get through security and thanked the gods no one else was waiting for an elevator.

“Yeah, just runnin’ an errand, though. I’m back on campus now; got a meeting with my advisor before she leaves for the break—”

“You should have stopped by.”

To that, Abe had no response other than to frown at his reflection in the elevator doors. _Ugh_ —he smelled like cabbage, for Christ's sake. The car heater had made the vegetables in his trunk stink so bad that he'd driven with the windows down all the way from Setauket, teeth chattering and the left side of his face stinging wet with snow, but apparently his suffering had been for fuck all in the end. His advisor would no doubt be _thrilled_.

“…You _will_ be home for Thanksgiving, I assume.”

Richard Woodhull loved to assume. Richard Woodhull’s will was an iron rod the whole damn world was supposed to bend around, and nothing so petty as even saying _hello_ to his sole surviving child was gonna get in the way of that.

“It’s funny, the way you say that,” sighed Abe, punching his floor in the elevator and leaning his head back against the wall. “As though I have any _choi_ —”

“I’ve invited Mary. She’s not flying home till next week, and it would be cruel to leave her alone at a time like this.” Abe’s grimace deepened, and he resisted the urge to pull his beanie down over his eyes. The bulletin board beside his head bristled with fliers advertising everything from intramural sports to theatre auditions to subtly worded inquiries about where to buy pot. He flicked one, sighing, and squeezed his eyes shut as though he could block out Dad’s voice. “I don’t believe I need to explain how rude it would be to stand up our guest. She particularly mentioned being eager to see _you_ —wanted me to thank you for being such a comfort to her, which I admit I found hard to believe, but I was nonetheless pleased to hear that you’d…”

Mary. God, _Mary_. Pretty little Mary with her hair like strawberries and the sharp taste of tears on her cheeks—even the thought of her made his guts twist. He couldn't do it. He couldn't even think for two seconds about sitting at that long quiet table with nobody but Dad and _her,_  all three of them mechanically chewing and swallowing and not saying a word. On the phone, Dad was still talking, something about how he had _a responsibility to Thomas’s memory_ and _family was so important right now_ , but Abe couldn’t focus on his words. The sensation of the elevator rushing upward made him feel lightheaded, as though he were only half real, and already his stomach was clenching at the thought of the coming days. How could he go? But how could he _not?_  The thought of spending the entire day alone, with only Thomas's ghost and his own treacherous brain for company, wound a cold thread of fear through Abe's guts. Nauseously, his gaze trailed along the bulletin board … and stopped.

It was horrible. It was hilarious. It was an abuse of Microsoft Word. And he never would’ve given it a second glance if Dad hadn’t been talking, or if Thomas hadn’t died, or if Anna still felt like a part of him, or if he hadn’t had a whole damn trunkful of cabbages making his car smell like sauerkraut. If _any_ of those things hadn’t happened—

But they had.

So he glanced.

 

 

The bottom edge of the flier had been cut into tabs. Doubtless, each one had been lovingly inscribed with the host's address and a type of food item for the bearer to bring. All but one had already been ripped off.

And Abe had never believed in fate. Fuck _fate_ —he had free will, damn it, and even if his life turned into a crappy YA fantasy novel this very moment and some old beardy guy told him he was The Chosen One, Abe would probably try to become a villain purely out of spite. But _this_ moment—this moment, here in an overheated elevator in Morningside Heights, was as close as he’d ever come to believing in some kind of higher plan. Because the one tab that remained:

 _Vegetable dish_.

Abe grinned.

“Sorry,” he cut in, talking right over whatever Dad was preaching about now. “Sorry, just remembered, I promised Anna I’d do Thanksgiving at her house this year.” As the elevator dinged for his floor, he tore the entire flier from the board.

“The _Smiths_. Abraham, that girl—”

“I promised! Nothing I can do, is there.” Suddenly in _much_ better spirits, Abe tossed a wink to the guy manning the reception desk as he headed toward his professor’s office down the hall. “Give my love to Mary, yeah?”

Before stuffing the flier into his pocket, Abe looked down at it one more time. An ugly border, a terrible font, and a Brooklyn address. It was nothing. It was everything. He felt, inexplicably, a flutter of excitement in his chest.

How many side dishes, he wondered, could a trunkful of cabbages make?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, there you have it: my very first time writing Abe as a POV character! His voice is fun to work with, and I hope I managed to do him justice. Alas, he's going through a tough time. Rather lacking in dear Bobby T so far, I know, but rest assured that we'll meet Rob properly in the next chapter. 
> 
> Comments and kudos are greatly appreciated—I'd love to hear what you think.
> 
> A transcript of the Friendsgiving flier: "No plans for Thanksgiving? Don't spend the day alone! Friends Giving!!! Inviting all Columbia Students and Faculty to a Friendsgiving Potluck Thusday Nov. 24 at 2pm! Good food, good company, and a chance to meet new friends! Please select a side dish from the options below to contribute as your portion of the meal. Can't wait to see you there!!! :)"


	2. A Friend in Need

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Abe gets to work, Thanksgiving arrives, and Robert Townsend gets the surprise of his life.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I failed in my quest to come up with a clever title for this chapter, which is why I'm giving you a dumb and non-funny play on Quaker terminology as a straightforward but accurate description of exactly what Robert is.

The answer, as it turned out, was _a lot_.

Abraham Woodhull—younger son of Richard and Meredith; 1L student at Columbia Law; Cain to a martyred Abel, heir to a corporate crown, and fiancé to a girl he loved and couldn’t love and didn’t feel whole with anymore—had never been much for cooking. They’d had _people_ for that, most of his years growin’ up, and from undergrad onward, his greatest culinary achievement had been learning to place a little glass of water in with yesterday’s pizza before he microwaved it. But in the two days before Thanksgiving, he shuttered himself away in his neglected nook of a kitchen and set to turning one trunkful of cabbage into a bona fide Friendsgiving feast.

With the ease of long practice, he ignored Dad’s calls. He ignored Mary’s too, as he’d been doing for weeks, and when the screen finally lit up with Anna’s name, he hesitated, thumb hovering over the swipe, before finally switching to silent altogether. Then he plugged his iPod into the speakers and cranked it so loud he wouldn’t even be able to hear a knock at the door. If someone _did_ knock. Not that he expected her to. Anna. If she bothered to check up on him, or if she didn’t—the point is that he wouldn’t hear either way, he wouldn’t know either way, he wouldn’t have to decide whether to answer either way, so there was no point agonizing about it, was there? With his hair tied back and twenty tabs open on Epicurious, he:

Tried his hand at a slaw with ginger dressing and a slaw with lemon rind and a peanut slaw that he tossed out upon realizing, belatedly, that he probably shouldn’t risk sending a stranger into anaphylactic shock;

Chopped cabbage into wedges for salad and into shreds for stir fry, till his fingernails felt permanently slick with cellulose and scraps crunched underfoot;

Roasted it with bacon, with potatoes, with curry sauce and balsamic vinaigrette; made it into soups and casseroles and stuffed sandwiches; ladled it out of the slow cooker with corned beef; till every piece of Tupperware he had was filled—till he was left with only hearts and scraps, in the end, and had resigned himself to never getting that bitter, sulphurous stench out of his skin.

And as he cooked, he drank, and he hacked his knife down onto the cutting board as though, by hurting _it_ enough, he could give it all of his tight, voiceless, unbearable, unspeakable pain and just feel empty again, for a couple of hours at least. Every empty beer can got crushed under his heel before being hurled at the bin. Dos Equis tasted like shit from the can, all skunky and flat, but he couldn’t do bottles anymore. He couldn’t even be around them, much less touch that glass to his lips. Even the way they clinked against each other in the carton reminded him far too much of the sound that bottle had made—the bottle he threw that night in the square. At the protest. The one that went—the one where Thomas … The night Thomas wasn’t supposed to be on duty.

At night, he ground the heels of his hands into his eyelids as he ached for sleep. In the colors that bloomed against his palms, he saw that bottle again and again. Red and blue police lights glittering on the glass and lamplight setting fire to its curves as it sailed in a graceful arc arc over his fellow protestors before shattering, with a chime sweet as laughter, against a policeman’s shield.

Drop. Crush. Toss. Crumpled aluminum bounced off the trash already piled in the bin and joined the soup of leaves and alcohol slicking the hardwood floor. Abe wiped sweat from his forehead and stirred the corned beef before opening another can.

A lot of beer sacrificed itself to the cause. And more than a few cabbages, for that matter—experiments that ended up charred beyond rescue and were buried, with full military honors, in the trash can outside. Heroes, the lot of ‘em. But by the time the clock chimed Thursday noon, Abe’s refrigerator was stuffed to the gills with the finest damn Friendsgiving fare a lonesome stranger could ask for—well, provided that stranger had a bit of a cabbage kink, maybe. Abe wouldn’t judge.

 _Not bad, Woodhull_ , he told himself, grinning at the wreckage of his kitchen. Maybe he oughta take this as a sign that he should’ve been a cabbage farmer all along. _Law school doesn’t pan out, looks like we got a future in somethin’, at least_.

The address on the flier led to a brownstone where the ground-floor windows were barred but the sidewalks shoveled and clean—one of those neighborhoods right on the border of “Cheap, but Safe-ish” and “Welcome to Stabville.” And then: the ascent. A tower of Tupperware wobbled in Abe’s arms. Back and forth along the switchbacks, he climbed; the stairs steep and shallow; the corridor so narrow he could only pray no one would try to walk down. By the third floor, his skin felt flushed and itchy with heat, and he belatedly wondered whether he maybe shoulda dressed up a bit from his usual beanie and jeans. By the fifth floor, he thought, fuck it, anyone who made him break a sweat before he even reached the door deserved to live with the consequences. With an _oof_ , he thunked the tower down on the landing and, already wrenching free of his scarf, pounded thrice on the door.

He was in the middle of checking whether he’d sweated through his shirt at the pits when the door wrenched open with a bang.

The guy glaring at him from the doorway had great posture and sandy hair and dressed like him mom had just finished getting him ready for Sunday school. Throw a hat on his head and some buckles on his shoes, and he’d-a made for a passable pilgrim, he looked so buttoned-up and drab. Just another asshole around Abe’s own age, probably getting his MBA in advertising or something equally dull. But in the handful of seconds between the moment that door opened and the moment it slammed shut in Abe’s face, exiling him with his cabbage friends, Abe didn’t have time to wonder overmuch about his host’s fashion sense or degrees or funny little pointy ears. Only two thoughts crossed his mind:

1\. _Wow, usually takes at least five minutes before people start lookin’ like they hate me;_ and:

2\. _Holy shit, his eyes._

 

\---

 

“Put that _down,”_ hissed Robert, wrenching his viola case from the grasp of a grizzled Scotsman who assured him, guffawing, that he “wasnae gonna break it, sonny, daint get yer knickers in a bunch.”

Only moments after averting that crisis, the next arose, when a redheaded girl (who had arrived tipsy and somehow tipped even further in the five minutes since) began attempting to “help” set the table for “lunch.” The unmistakable chime of shattering dishware was so familiar that, for a moment, he could have been in The 723 again, as though nothing had ever changed. Nostalgia stabbed sharp as any knife. At the sound, Robert whirled, brandishing the viola like a shield.

“Oh no,” whispered Drunk Girl (as Robert had lovingly christened her within seconds of her arrival), smiling wobbily down at the shards around her feet in helpless confusion. Fortunately, Hair Model (immaculately coiffed, immaculately dressed, immaculate five o’clock shadow on a square jaw) lifted her away before she stepped in any, shepherding her to safety as Drama Queen (in the thespian sense; candy-red lipstick, wicked grin, a playbill pattern printed on her purse) crouched down in her character shoes to pick up the larger pieces by hand.

Comprehension spread slowly across Drunk Girl’s face, culminating, ultimately, in a gasp. Over Hair Model’s shoulder, her stricken eyes found Robert’s.

“I’m so sorry!” she cried, and for three seconds, Robert stared right back at her, horrified at the prospect of actual tears. Hair Model patted her on the head.

“You’ll have to excuse Becky—she’s drunk,” he explained, oh so helpfully, as Becky, Apparently buried her face in his shoulder with a quiet sob. “We’ll pay you back for the plate.”

Beside him, the Scotsman chuckled low.

“Oh sonny boy, this is gonna be one for the ages, jest you watch. A grand ol’ time for all.”

Robert could only clutch his viola and seethe.

His home … was under _attack_.

He had been minding his own business when it all began, about ten minutes previously, with an innocent knock at the door. That in itself had elicited a frown. He wasn’t expecting any deliveries; he had never interacted with his neighbors, or indeed noticed any proof of their existence beyond the occasional shouting match at 1 a.m. And surely none of his acquaintances would be rude enough to show up unannounced, on a _holiday_ , no less … Never mind that, on this particular holiday, this particular Quaker was doing nothing more interesting than making himself a turkey sandwich as he took a break from writing.

Then: that knock. Before he knew what was happening, Becky and Hair Model were shoving past him with their arms full of food, exclaiming delightedly about his decor (“So _minimalist!_ Such _goals!”_ ). They were followed first by Drama Queen and then by one very questionable Scot. That one had been trailing a suspicious distance behind all the others and was the only one not carrying food. By the time Robert had recovered from his shock enough to pose certain questions—just small-talk, really; frivolous things like, “Who are you,” “What are you doing,” “Get the hell out of my apartment”—it was too late: the intruders had made themselves at home.

They didn’t even seem to _hear_ his objections over their prattling and introductions and chatter. By the time the second round of knocking sounded at the door, he’d gotten so far as punching 9-1-1 into his phone—but what was he to say?

_911, what’s your emergency?_

_Yes, send help, please, I am in the midst of a home invasion._

_Have you been harmed?_

_Not physically._

_Are they stealing anything?_

_Oh, no. Quite the opposite._

_What do you mean?_

_They brought lunch_.

As he snatched the broom from the closet, undecided whether he should use it first on the broken plate or on his “guests,” Robert heard the front door click open of its own accord.

“Hey man, you uh, you left the door unlocked, so I guess I’ll just put all this in the kitchen, if that’s cool with you!”

It was the one who’d just knocked—the short one, in the brown leather jacket and knit hat … Though, at the moment, he appeared to be little more than a stack of Tupperware on legs. A final, larger tub sat on the floor before him. Robert all but threw the broom at Drama Queen as the intruder began _kicking_ it down the hall in front of him.

“One _wonders_ ,” he snapped, stopping the box with his foot, “exactly what are you hoping to accomplish here. Attempting to answer that classic existential dilemma, perhaps: Whether ‘tis nobler in the mind to ruin my carpet when you inevitably trip and fall, or to cut right to the chase and simply _punt_ your damn food all over it?”

“Jesus. Wow. Okay. Never heard of innocent until proven guilty, I take it? You’d get along swell with some of my classmates, ironically enough. Well, hate to bring _The Loyalists_ into this, but if we’re talkin’ lit studies, I’d say maybe don’t jump straight to malice when you could blame carelessness instead.” Peeking around the Tupperware tower, a flash of a grin. “Or laziness, in this case. Like hell was I gonna make two trips. Anyway, lid’s on tight, my friend, even I can manage that much.”

Robert had to lurch backward to avoid the next kick, which coincided with—oh, God—another knock at the door. The tower wobbled as the boy looked back. “Shite—here, I got it—”

“No, don’t—”

And then the tower _slid_.

Robert lunged. Sacrificing his chest and face for the greater good, he caught the Tupperware against his front, wincing as plastic thunked into his eye, and staggered backward with it till his back hit the wall. Trapped there in the narrow corridor, ankle tangled with the boy’s as they both froze, awkwardly balanced but not daring to move, Robert became aware of two things:

One: suddenly, everything smelled like cabbage.

Two: his hand had landed atop the boy’s.

Those knuckles were rough and scabbed over, as though he’d been fighting. That skin, very warm.

Robert snatched away his hand.

“Oh, yeah,” came a breathless laugh from the other side of the tower. All he could see was plastic. “Question for ya. No pressure, I want your _honest opinion_. Might kinda crush my last ounce of will to live if you answer wrong, though. You like books, I take it? How d’ya feel about ‘The Walrus and the Carpenter’?”

In no version of his expectations for the day had Robert imagined having a conversation like this with cabbage stew resting gently on his face. “From—Lewis Carroll?”

“That’s the one.”

“… _Why?”_

“Kings, then, how d’ya feel about kings? Not a big fan, myself.”

“I don’t—”

“All right, all right, fine, I’ll skip the shoes and ships and all. The point is: How do you feel about _cabbages?_ ‘Cause I brought…” A long … long pause. “…A few.”

This was how he died, Robert realized. Trapped in his own hallway, surrounded by occupying forces, crushed beneath a tower of cabbage dishes and New York’s most annoying man.

“I feel … the same way about cabbages as I do about you, and your cohorts in the other room, and this entire situation: I want them _gone_.”

“Ha! Bit late for second thoughts, don’t you think?”

“What do you mean?”

The boy craned to look at him around the tower, his eyebrows lifting slowly and inexorably toward his hat. He had very level brows, Robert noticed. Level brows, and a face too narrow, too impish, and too mustelidesque to ever be called handsome. Cute, perhaps. But not handsome. Robert did not approve of that face, he decided—especially not when those thin, tight lips quirked up at one corner in a smirk.

Abruptly, he shoved the entire tower fully into Robert’s arms.

“There we go! You have fun with that.” As he slipped free, the boy—Cabbage Patch Kid, Robert decided as he struggled to remain upright; he would dub the boy Cabbage Patch Kid, since he’d need to put _something_ on the tombstone after he got his revenge for this mess—pulled a crumpled piece of paper from his pocket and laid it gently atop the stack.

A matter-of-fact _tap_ to the paper. “Jog your memory a bit,” he said, as though that explained anything, and went to answer the door.

Somehow, Robert managed to wrestle the Tupperware into submission as Cabbage Patch Kid greeted the newcomer, a standoffish-looking blonde woman carrying a large pan. By the time he staggered into the kitchen, the room was so cluttered that it was all he could do to find some free counter space. His turkey sandwich, Robert noticed with a sinking heart, had been reduced to little more than crumbs in the Scotsman’s beard.

The _interlopers_ all seemed to be getting on, at least. They were passing out bottles of Becky’s hard cider when Robert finally got a look at the paper on the stack.

…The _flier_ , to be exact.

He read the entire flier three times before accepting that it was, in fact, real, and that he was real, and this situation was real, and he was not going to wake up any moment now and realize it had all been a terrible dream. And his mouth, always thin, drew into a wide, flat line.

Cabbage Patch Kid was the only one without a bottle in hand. He was in the midst of laughing at something Drama Queen, who was sneaking a flask out of her purse, had said when Robert seized him by the bicep and dragged him aside.

“I’m putting you in charge for the next five minutes.” Robert’s voice was low. It shrunk the world to nothing more than the inches between his lips and the boy’s ear, a space so narrow that he could feel the ghost of foreign skin tingling against his cheek. “If anything else breaks, I will break _you_.”

He waited until blue eyes met his own before releasing the boy and shutting himself in his bedroom down the hall.

There, alone in that clean, uncluttered space, Robert took a deep breath, and as he exhaled, he felt himself sinking into calm. He embraced it, the calm. It was all he had left. His sword and his shield, and his armor as well—against the outside world, yes, but also against the anger constantly simmering just below the surface of his own skin. Some days, the calm felt so brittle that he feared he’d crack open and be unable to stop all that rage from spilling out over anything and everything that happened to be near. Some days, he wanted to let it. But what would the point of that be, when he would be the first thing burned?

So he doused himself in calm instead, like a hot coal in water, so that the surface dulled and turned ashen even as the core continued to burn. Once the boil was down to a simmer again, he took out his phone.

“Robert! What a wonderful surprise! Did you get the turkey I ordered for you?”

All his life, teachers and classmates alike had been visibly taken aback when wry, reserved Robert Townsend showed up to Open House with the living embodiment of friendliness and cheer that was his father. Had they known either Townsend better, they might have realized the two had plenty in common at heart: stubbornness, individualism, a weakness for puns and quips. What they certainly would not have noticed was a family tendency toward lying—because Samuel never tried, and Robert never got caught.

Practice makes perfect, after all. And that was why he did not for half a second believe the exaggerated “surprise” in his father’s voice.

“The store delivered it this morning, yes, thank you. I have to admit, I was at a loss to imagine why you thought I could possibly need an entire turkey to myself … until about fifteen minutes ago, at least.”

“Oh? What happened fifteen minutes ago?”

Looking down at the flier in his hand, Robert sighed. _Comic sans_ , Father. _Really_. “Father. I’m going to ask you a question, and I would appreciate if you answered honestly.”

“Well, I think I always endeavor to be honest, so—”

“Did you, by any chance, go behind my back, without my knowledge or consent, to invite the entirety of Columbia University to a ‘Friendsgiving’ celebration _at my home._ ”

There it was. Dropping the act entirely, Father scoffed.

“Oh Robert, you make it sound like such a terrible thing!”

“ _Father!_ How could you—!”

“Well, I wouldn’t have had to if you’d just have come home! Robert, I couldn’t bear to think of you spending the day all by yourself.” He sounded so earnest that all Robert could do was rub his temples, too weary to truly be mad anymore. “All the years you’ve lived in that city, Robert, and no friends. It’s not healthy. I knew you wouldn’t agree if I suggested it, but you insisted on staying in town, and you’ve been so withdrawn since the bar closed, and, well—I _worry_ about you. All I wanted was for you to have someone to keep you company, especially this year. Can you truly fault me for that?”

Robert sighed a yet deeper sigh.

“And what if I’d gone out today? What if my apartment had been untidy? What if I’d made other plans? What if I’d been entertaining a—a—” He cast about for the most outlandish possibility possible. “—a lady here? Or _ladies?"_

The silence on the other end of the line was positively pregnant. He imagined Father kitted out in full beekeeper gear at the family farm, hand clapped over his mouth lest his laughter disturb the hives.

Robert changed tacks. “The point is, I am an independent adult, and you cannot—”

“And you are also a Quaker. A believer that God is in every person, even strangers arrived unexpectedly at your door. A _Friend_. And a Friend without friends, my boy, is a sad sight indeed.” There was a purr in Father’s voice. “So go out there and make some.”

And with that, the line went dead.

If he gripped the phone any harder, it was like to shatter. Finger by finger, with a conscious effort, Robert relaxed his grip. He would need to be calm when he went back out. He would need to be armored in every ounce of his dignity and chilly reserve as he explained to his … _guests_ that there had been a grave misunderstanding and that he was, of course, very sorry, but they needed to leave. They would protest, no doubt, and _boo_ and gripe like the entitled customers at The Corner did when he presented a cappuccino with anything other than the _precise_ amount of foam, but he’d endured worse humiliation by far. If he could survive losing The 723, then a handful of disappointed Columbians should be—

“Overbearing father, huh.” Startled by the voice, Robert whirled. “Yeah, I feel you there.”

His door was open. When … had his door opened? He’d been so focused on Father, he hadn’t even … But never mind that. Far more troubling than the open door per se was the one who had opened it. Disgustingly at ease, Cabbage Patch Kid leaned against the doorjamb, his body a lazy, diagonal slash.

Robert’s eyes narrowed. “…I told you to watch the—”

“Yeah, and nothing’s broken, has it? Only, the natives were gettin’ restless out there, so I figured you might wanna come take the reins. Didn’t mean to interrupt nothing, I swear.” With his hands in his pockets, he whistled lowly and sauntered a few steps into Robert’s room. “A whole Thanksgiving dinner. _Damn_. Gotta hand it to your old man—even _mine_ never came up with anything as sadistic as that.”

Robert looked down at the phone in his hand. “…He means well.”

A laugh. “If you say so.”

“ _He means well_ ,” Robert snapped. “That doesn’t mean I agree with his actions. I didn’t want this. I _don’t_ want this.” The boy was strolling slowly along the perimeter now, smiling in a stiff, almost aggressive way that hollowed his cheeks and thinned his mouth to a line. Robert hated it. He hated his saunter, and he hate the proprietary way he was inspecting the smattering of artwork on the walls, as though this were a hotel room he’d rented for the night. A tap of a finger against Robert’s framed diploma, knocking it just a _hair_ askew, and the anger stirred. “He had no right to offer, and you have no right to be here, so I would thank you all very kindly to _leave_.”

Examining the bookshelf now, Cabbage Patch Kid frowned over his shoulder at him.

“Jesus, just roll with it, won’t you?” Idly, he pulled a title from the shelf. _Les Misérables_. Leather bound, pages edged with gold leaf. “Everybody’s having a good time out there, you know. We brought more food and more booze than anyone knows what to do with, and—”

“I don’t drink.”

Holding the book in both hands, the boy rolled his eyes. “…Right, so, more for the rest of us. The point is … Look, friend. I … I feel for you, really. It’s a heck of a surprise. Not somethin’ I’d wanna have sprung on me, that’s for sure! But excepting the old guy, maybe, nobody seems _too_ weird, which in this fucking city is a both a miracle and a damn good omen if I ever saw one. I know ‘fun’ is this weird and scary concept you probably never encountered before, but you seem like a clever guy, so if you _really_ put your mind to it, I bet you could—”

“I _was_ having ‘fun.’ _Alone_. In the peace and quiet—appreciation of which is appallingly lacking in this town. If it’s not sirens and shouting matches, it’s teenagers breaking my dishes, apparently, or bored, vainglorious college students rioting in the street—”

 _Les Mis_ thunked onto the desk. “You don’t know what you’re talking about, man.”

“Don’t I? They used to hang around my bar and talk about how the economy has screwed our generation while wasting their money on round after round of beer. Funny thing, they never seemed terribly concerned about running up the bill. They fancied themselves revolutionaries, _Les Amis_ in a modern _l’ABC_ , but all they really were was boys playing at being men playing at having any true understanding of economics or politics or sociology. This country is rotten with injustice, but what _they_ do is not productive in any sense of the—”

“Seriously, dude, _shut up_.”

“—would thank you not to give me orders in _my own home_. If you don’t like it, you can do what you should already have done and _leave_.”

Cabbage Patch Kid was longer inspecting his room. Cabbage Patch Kid was standing with his back very straight and his mouth a hard line that hollowed his cheeks and carved deep the lines beneath his blue blue eyes, and the sight of his hands clenched into fists made Robert’s anger curl like a pleased cat, arching its back in a purr.

Savoring each word, he drawled, “I know the truth about them. I imagine I know the truth about _you_. It’s very easy to talk anarchy and revolution while you’re safe in a classroom, surrounded by sympathetic ears—but here in the real world, going up against the seats of power is how people like us _lose_ things. _Real_ things.”

“So you think we should just stop fightin’ altogether, is that it? You gonna thank ‘em, those _seats of power,_ next time they tell you to bend over and get fucked?”

“Don’t you dare presume to know me!” Robert hissed, his skin cracking, his anger boiling over, hot and delicious and _oh_ , it burned, but he never should have held it in. It made him yearn to touch, to feel, to seize that boy by the arm and drag him out of the apartment by force. Robert strode forward. “You do _not_ know me, you don’t know what I’ve been through, and the last thing I need on top of everything else is some smart-mouthed jackass in here daring to tell me how to deal with my own life, thank you _very_ mu—”

One moment, his fingers were clenching on leather, and he had the fleeting thought that the boy’s arm was more solid than it looked. The next, his back slammed into the wall.

“You think _you_ got problems, man? _I killed my brother._ ”

Fingers twisted in the collar of Robert’s shirt. Three inches, he must have had on the other man. Yet those arms pinned him against the wall like iron bars. That narrow face twisted not with sarcasm now, but in a snarl so etched with pain that Robert couldn’t tell whether it was fear or fascination he was feeling as he stared, transfixed, at the boy—only that he couldn’t look away.

“Look, man." Despite the snarl, his voice was soft. "I’ve got a fuckton of cabbages to get rid of and no living family I want to be with today, but I—I can’t be alone, either. And all those people out there? I don’t know them. I don’t know where they’re from or what they’re about or why they were desperate enough to spend Thanksgiving with a stranger. But guess what? Whatever shit they’ve got going on their lives, they put their problems aside for long enough this week to candy some yams for your ungrateful ass. The least you can do is say thanks.”

Slowly, the grip on his shirt eased. The boy stepped back. Then, all nonchalance once more, he smoothed the wrinkles from Robert’s shirtfront as though they were old friends.

“So suck it up for a couple hours, huh. And come on. Freddy made apple pie.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next time: the pie! And some other things, of course. Gonna say this will actually be 4 chapters, probably, rather than 3. Ah, I'm so happy to finally get to spend quality time with my beloved Robert. Hopefully you could figure out by the tags and descriptions which guests are which, despite / because of Robert's radical new system of nomenclature.
> 
> Kudos are greatly appreciated, constructive criticism is always welcome, and I'd love to hear what you think!
> 
> A few quotes / paraphrases from the show, as is my custom: "You'll have to excuse Becky. She's drunk," hails from 3.06, though Freddy isn't the speaker; "Don't ever presume to know me," "I already know the truth about you," and "You are a boy playing a man playing a spy," all come from 2.04; and "What if he's entertaining a lady? Or ladies?" from 3.05.
> 
> Literary allusions are to _Hamlet,_ of course, _Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There,_ and, most obscurely, Jane West's _The Loyalists,_ published in 1812. Why does Abe have quote-level familiarity with a historical-fiction novel published in 1812? Idk. Maybe he took some lit electives in undergrad. For my part, I used it because it contains a precursor to Hanlon's Razor and because and the title was too apropos to pass up.
> 
> A note on Abe's family: I've given his mother's name here as Meredith. Historically, it wasn't. Abe's mother was named Mary. Mary Woodhull, nee Smith. Much like Abe's wife: Mary Woodhull, nee Smith. Who shared a surname with Anna Strong, nee Smith. I made up Meredith because I _cannot handle_ how everyone in 18th-century Setauket shared the same five names.


End file.
